Staffers Probed for Bitcoin Mining Saga

Staffers Probed for Bitcoin Mining Saga

The US state of Louisiana is reported to have been probing a group of former workers, who are alleged to have participated in a Bitcoin mining saga. The former officials of the office of the attorney for the state of Louisiana were reported to have used the official resources for purposes of mining this leading virtual coin.

Under Carpet Probe

Up to the time this article was made, senior officials in the said office hadn’t come out to make any public remark concerning the incident. This was based on a report that was done by the Tribune News Service on the 2nd of March 2018.

But despite that, sources have revealed to the media house that the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation has started asking those who were around that certain location questions. This was after coming across hardware that they thought must have been used for the alleged Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin is mined in a high-energy sensitive process where new coins are minted after a period of time.

The Latest Investigation

If the probing process confirms that the former staffers took part in that process, this would be the latest probe that has been done concerning alleged Bitcoin mining using public resources. But there are incidents in the past where public officers have been caught mining virtual currencies using public office resources.

The latest one came to a culmination in January 2017. This was when a former staffer of the Inspector General’s Federal Reserve Office was fined a total of $5,000. He had been caught mining this largest digital coin on a server that belonged to the Central Bank of the United States of America. The crime took place between 2012 and 2014. It, however, came to a conclusion in the first month of 2017, when the officer was fined $5,000 for the crime.

Later on, in the same year {2017}, a Department of Education officer for the city of New York was sanctioned for mining Bitcoins. He committed the “crime” using the computers belonging to the organization between March and April of 2014.

Smartphones Could be Used to Mine Bitcoins

As all these happen, an established cybersecurity company has warned that a smartphone could be hacked without the owner’s knowledge and used to mine the digital coins. The Czech Republic-based company known as Avast, has stated that the hackers could even use other tools such as the security cameras to mine this precious currency.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, which was held on 28th February 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, Avast, stated that there is an increased potential for such hacks. This is based on the fact that there would be more than 20 billion devices that would be connected to the Internet in 2020. By the close of 2017, there were around 8.4 billion devices that were connected to the Internet.